I have been listening to a lot of audio books lately. I started reading several leadership/business books in hopes of going from pretending like I know what I am doing running a nonprofit to actually knowing what I am doing. One topic I am particularly interested in is learning from our mistakes an not letting the fear of failure keep us from trying something new. I believe this is one of those transferable skills you learn as a graduate student in science. (For this and other lessons learned the hard way during my graduate career, check out this post). But it is still easy to feel like I fail more than others or that successful people somehow naturally make the best decisions all of the time. I found a book called Mistakes I Made at Work by Jessica Bacal which features stories from a number of successful business women. I was super excited when I started listening. Immediately after Mistakes, I listened to Aisha Tyler’s book Self-Inflicted Wounds. If you haven’t heard of the gem that is Aisha Tyler, she is a hilarious, intelligent, and nerdy comedian who I first fell in love with as the voice of Lana in the adult cartoon “Archer.” I quickly realized that successful business ladies are not nearly as honest about their mistakes and embarrassments as comedians, and there are many more worthwhile lessons to be learned from Aisha Tyler.

Skip Mistakes I Made at Work

Business women have to appear flawless and most of their stories are supremely boring.

I am aware that I have ended up on a path that will someday likely require me to pretend to be business-like. Yet, I enjoy being flawed. I am who I am, and being someone else’s idea of perfect sounds really boring. (The stories in this book only confirm the threat of the boring.) This will probably bite me in the ass someday, and I may end up writing a book called Mistakes I Made: I Didn’t Pretend I Was Perfect. And that book will be just as boring as this one.

It was a wonderful premise, and I was very excited to read Mistakes. However, I quickly found out that very few of the women were able to discuss real mistakes that were truly difficult to recover from, emotionally or professionally. Most of the stories were some variation of “My first job was not a good fit for me, and I learned the importance of being true to myself.” Whoa. How risque.

But seriously, is anyone’s first job a perfect fit? Isn’t this just called “starting out”?

Snooze.

Instead, Read Self-Inflicted Wounds

Raw honesty opens up many more opportunities for learning and personal growth.

I listened to Aisha read her audio book and then promptly bought the hard copy just to have. The book starts in her childhood and continues through 33 stories of epic humiliation and the lessons learned, or relearned, from them. Seriously, that is my favorite part. While telling each story, she evaluates the experiences and how she might avoid these mistakes in the future even while admitting that she/we may have to learn the same lesson a few times before it really sinks in.

In the preface, Tyler tells us that these stories are based on true events, but are also based on her “spotty and highly unreliable memory, and for all I know, may be complete fabrication.” Regardless, her ability to reflect on many (often literally) painful memories and gleam a sliver of insight from even the most seemingly idiotic of choices does two important things for the reader. 1) It provides hours of entertainment. She is a seriously funny lady. 2) It shows us the importance of resilience. To be great, to make it as a comic, to be a successful scientist or creative entrepreneur, you have to give it all you’ve got. You have to constantly get out there, show the world what you are made of, get knocked on your ass when the world is not impressed, and get up to do it all over again… hundreds of times. And you can do it. Because lots of people do it every day.

Follow Blog via Email

Recent Events on: Central Indiana Science Outreach

Remember the great time we had celebrating Pint of Science in 2016? Get ready for an even better time in 2017 with taste of science April 24-26. taste of science is a national science festival taking place annually over three evenings in April – the 24th-26th. There are many amazing children’s events out there, but people’s curiosity […]

PUBLIC LECTURE, FEBRUARY 15th, 7pm BIER BREWERY, 65th NEAR BINFORD CINSO and the Center for Inquiry of Indiana co-host the monthly lecture series “Cafe Inquiry.” RSVP here! We’ll be at a number of locations in 2017, so be sure you check the venue! Presentation: Get ready to engage your mind, think critically, and apply that thinking to […]

PUBLIC LECTURE, January 18th, 7pm ROUND TOWN BREWERY, DOWNTOWN INDIANAPOLIS CINSO and the Center for Inquiry of Indiana co-host the monthly lecture series “Cafe Inquiry.” RSVP here! We’ll be at a number of locations in 2017, so be sure you check the venue! Presentation: Did you know that before settlement, 85% of the state of Indiana […]